Friday, June 11, 2010

Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge

My "Small Measures with Ashley" post is up today on Design Sponge. This week's topic discusses the 2010 Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge winner. I highly invite you to check it out. I've found not only the winner's ideas enormously inspiring, but the creative thinking and action going on globally (and entered for consideration in the challenge) to be the perfect antidote to the despair that I often feel when confronted with the enormity of the problems facing our planet and its people.

I'll admit to having personal ties to the challenge, as well. Not only is the director of the BFI the husband of my editor, he's a very dear friend. David McConville is a regular fixture on the English landscape (so much so, in fact, that it was he who officiated at our wedding, looking very much the Amish minister as he helped Glenn and I exchange our vows in our all-of-five-minutes ceremony-just the way I like it!). He's a close friend and colleague of Glenn's, with a wild, inventive, looking-out-for-everyone-and-every-creature mindset. David was involved in deciding this year's BFI Challenge winner, Operation Hope. He's got his finger on the pulse of sustainability initiatives world wide. It's folks like him that would make Bucky proud.

Additionally, Buckminster Fuller spent the summers of 1948 and 1949 in neighboring Black Mountain, teaching at the now defunct Black Mountain College. It was this university and it's storied history that first drew my husband to the area years ago. Had it not been for Bucky (and Merce Cunningham and John Cage and Josef and Annie Albers and many, many others), I might have never met my sweet man.

I hope your weekend is splendid. I'm off for a "Nugget" check-up soon, followed by several hours at the cake shop baking wedding cakes this afternoon. Tomorrow morning hubs and I will be offering a kid's cooking demonstration at the City Market. After that, it's all about prepping for Monday night's talk.

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About Me

Making an attempt to craft a good life with my husband and young son in a small mountain community. I find pleasure in the light at dusk, atlases, hard cider, cat antics, dog breath, baby giggles, homemade ice cream and snorty laughter.
Author of the "Homemade Living" book series (Lark Books) which showcases topics related to small-scale homesteading and some of the diverse ways people are reconnecting with their food and food communities and taking up sustainable food practices.
I also host a bi-monthly column every Friday on Design*Sponge:http://www.designspongeonline.com/category/small-measures.
E-mail me directly at: ashleyadamsenglish(at)gmail.com.

The Best LIttle Chicken Coop in Candler

"The Big Problem is nothing more or less than the sum total of countless little everyday choices, most of them made by us and most of the rest of them made in the name of our needs and desires and preferences."-Michael Pollan